Many merchants have telephone or “call processing” systems and other systems by which potential and existing customers may make purchases, access and modify existing order information, obtain product information, etc. Thus, quickly and accurately handling telephone calls or other means for conducting customer service transactions is critical for merchants to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction.
These call processing systems are well-known in the art. Specifically, in a traditional switched-telephone network, common telecommunications vendors provide call-processing systems incorporating interactive voice response systems and automatic-call distributors. For example, the AT&T Conversant system (as defined in Moosemiller, John P. AT&T's CONVERSANT 1 Voice System, Speech Technology, March/April 1986) is a typical automated call-processing system capable of managing a series of voice channels accessed though a common switched network. The Conversant system's architecture utilizes user-inputted signals for distributing simultaneous calls and providing a series of unique applications to the callers accessing the system. Thus, a user dialing a specific telephone number is provided automated spoken voice prompts to assist the user negotiate through the system to obtain automated information regarding a specific service, product or the like.
For example, these common call processing systems may be utilized by travel-related businesses for common reservation services. Specifically, a travel-related business may use a call-processing system to provide customer service operations such as travel itinerary verification or to make travel reservations. Other industries such as cable and telephone companies use call processing systems for outbound promotional sales and inbound repair and other related services. Brokerage houses, banks, and other financial institutions often market services to customers via common call processing systems. Telemarketers also utilize call processing systems to limit costs associated with human operators and determine a consumer's potential interest in products and services often offered in the form of games or lotteries designed to pique a consumer's interest in the item offered.
Most of these prior art systems require a user to activate or interact with the system by entering information via a common dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) ordinary telephone. However, as signal recognition technologically is developing, many call-processing systems are adopting voice synthesis devices for interacting with the system.
Many of the afore-mentioned call processing systems have multiple numbers from which a caller must select before even dialing, because each telephone number or group of numbers may correspond to one or more certain types of transactions for which callers may access the call processing system. For example, some call processing systems can have hundreds of phone numbers from which a potential or existing customer or other caller must select the appropriate number corresponding to the desired transaction type. The vast array of telephone numbers is troublesome, as it requires some knowledge of the call processing system in order to correctly select the appropriate telephone number. Consequently, potential and existing customers interacting with these prior art call processing systems frequently dial a telephone number that does not correspond to their desired transaction, resulting in the caller being re-routed or transferred to another phone number, menu, or application, because the application they initially accessed does not handle their desired transaction type. This improper routing results in additional telecommunications fees to the entity offering the call-processing system as well as frustrated customers. The frustrated customers often “opt-out” of the call-processing automated operation and request the assistance of a human operator thus eliminating the financial benefits achieved by employing an automated call-processing system.
In addition to this drawback of traditional call processing systems, previous call-processing systems fail to provide an opportunity to consumers to tailor the consumer's interaction with the system. Most call processing systems deliver prompts to callers during the course of determining the desired transaction and performing the transaction. For example, the caller may be prompted to press a certain key on their telephone key pad if they are seeking to conduct a first transaction type, or to press another key if they are seeking to conduct a second transaction type, and so on. In addition, many call processing systems require callers to traverse many such options before arriving at the desired transaction application and ultimately completing the transaction. Thus, in addition to errors resulting from incorrectly selecting the telephone number to dial prior to accessing the call processing system, many errors are also attributable to incorrectly responding to prompts regarding the caller's intended transaction.
Furthermore, each of the menus or applications traversed by a caller during a particular call must be traversed by every caller. That is, every caller accesses standard, identical menus and/or applications. Thus, even callers that are familiar with the call processing system must spend the time necessary to traverse the appropriate menus to arrive at the desired location in the call processing system. This can be very frustrating to the caller.